The approval came during the first of three days of hearings at the Sheraton Downtown Denver Hotel on a broad set of proposed rules regulating drilling operations near communities.

The rules approved Monday “require that operators sample nearby water wells both before and after drilling activities as a way to provide assurance that water supplies are not affected by energy development and identify potential problems in the very rare instances of impact,” the commission said in an announcement.

“Only two other states have mandatory groundwater programs in place and no other state in the country requires operators to take post-drilling water samples,” the announcement said.

“This new set of groundwater monitoring rules once again puts Colorado in the forefront of thoughtful and progressive regulatory oversight of energy development,” said Matt Lepore, director of the commission, in the statement. “We worked earnestly with many stakeholders to develop a groundwater rule that provides strong protections and that we believe strikes the right balance among many interested parties.”

Environmental leaders saw it differently. They complained that the new rules allow energy companies to choose which drilling sites are to be tested, and exclude parts of Adams, Boulder, Larimer and Weld counties — known as the Wattenberg Field — from the most rigorous requirements of the testing program.

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